


Camille on Cutting

by glorisbelle



Category: Sharp Objects (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24398182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorisbelle/pseuds/glorisbelle
Summary: Camille's perspective on self harm and drinking.
Kudos: 4





	Camille on Cutting

I plopped down on the lumpy rehab mattress as I reached for my copy of Even Silence Has an End. I could see Alice nervously toying with her clothes, pulling her sleeves into her fists.

“You’re lucky you can still wear skirts” I commented. Something to take her mind off family visitation day.

“It’s a pain, making sure to cover enough territory.” Admitted Alice “But I made a promise to myself…” she lifted her skirt to reveal a web of horizontal, sometimes diagonal scars. Ranging from angry reds to deep purples “three inches above the knee. Otherwise well, _you_ know”

 _I do know_. “I haven’t worn a skirt since college.”

***

The memories of Alice haunt me in my daydreams.

By the time I was in college, I had already carved through my arms, chest, stomach, and upper back. I had sex in dimly lit rooms with a shirt on. You see cutting, carving is like an infection. It spreads until it consumes all of you. Flash forward to graduation, I had sliced through my legs, breasts, and lower back.

Once I started running out of room on myself I realized I needed a new release. Enter vodka.

I partied in high school. Got drunk my fair share. I never understood why everyone had such an issue with self harm. So many forms of it are socially acceptable, even glorified. Smoking for one, everyone knows cigarettes are cancer sticks yet no one bats an eye when a man takes a drag of his cigarette at a bar or a woman casually rests a burning cigarette out a car window. And drinking. Everyone drinks, everywhere, all the time. Weddings, churches, parties, parks, sporting events. Everywhere.

Drinking numbs the pain. It makes me forget. Forget Marian. Forget Adora, the fact that she doesn’t love me. Forget Anne. Forget Natalie. Forget Alice. Forget what lingers under my clothes. Vodka drowns the screams of my tingling skin. So I down bottle after bottle, and replace one vice with another.


End file.
